Over at the Goodbye, Microsoft web site, Brad R. takes Ubuntu to task for abandoning dial-up modem users. Apparently Ubuntu no longer includes the GnomePPP dial-up package in the distribution, without which you can't get online via dial-up. It gets better: if you do have some way to connect, when you download something from the Ubuntu repository, the first thing Ubuntu does is update its 16+ megabyte repository index. Happy waiting! Brad concludes that "Ubuntu is for broadband users only."

“when you download something from the Ubuntu repository, the first thing Ubuntu does is update its 16+ megabyte repository index”

The carat weight of this gem cannot be truly appreaciated unless you 've heard about Canonical’s ambitions to put Ubuntu in smartphones. Want to download a small tetris app? You have to waste 16 megabytes of your quota first. Does Canonical know that in some countries carriers don’t offer contracts with gigabyte quotas? I am paying 50euros for a 350MB contract here. So i have to waste all my daily quota just so Ubuntu can upgrade it’s index, because Canonical isn’t even good at copying the Android Market. Assuming Ubuntu does make it on phones of course. The situation with netbooks that also use mobile networks is just as bad (though contracts for netbooks -which don’t offer any kind of telephone functionality- are bette here, but still